Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/169

158 "Oh, Tom can do anything, you know; he's so entertaining," the girl explained. "Besides," she laughed, "you ought n't to feel irritated; your grandfather's name headed the list."

"Indeed!" said Floyd. "They kept it from me. How did Mr. Gary classify himself?"

"Oh, he came in among the first ten. That was fair enough; he is so important socially—always getting up things, you know.—That little girl in pink there—she thinks Tom Gary is a perfect basilisk—is n't that what you call it? He left her out of the list—and she's silly enough to be afraid of him; she'd like more than any one else to be counted in. But of course she does n't belong. She's one of the nouveaux riches. I feel halfway sorry for her; she's trying so hard. She and I have the same sewing-school every Saturday morning down at the North Side Settlement, so I see a good deal of her; it's her mother that is trying to push her into everything."

"You teach a sewing-class?" Floyd asked, with some surprise that she should do anything so worthy.

"Yes, every Saturday morning. All the girls do something now; I hate it, but you don't like to drop out of things. Sally March has gone in for nursing; she told me she had to give an old beggar woman a bath the other day; I thought that was about the limit."

Floyd asked with some curiosity,—

"Who are a few of the Hundred and Fifty—besides 'us'?"

"Oh, most of the people in this room. It's easier to pick out those who are n't," she answered, and she enumerated some of the interlopers.

She thought it queer that after what she had just told him he should at the first opportunity dance with the little girl in pink.

Floyd asked his grandmother the next day if she knew a man named Tom Gary.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "Everybody knows him."